Gov. Wes Moore (D) and legislative leaders declared victory Wednesday in their efforts to address affordability issues for taxpayers, as they signed a $70.8 billion budget for fiscal 2027.

“This budget makes life just a little bit more affordable for our people,” Moore said before signing the budget Wednesday morning. “This budget strengthens Maryland’s economic competitiveness, and it all starts with protecting our people.”

Key to the affordability fight were efforts to rein in spiking utility costs. Those got a boost Wednesday when House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel) and Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) announced an agreement on comprehensive utility reform legislation.

That bill, should it win final passage as expected, would save ratepayers an estimated $150 per year.

“Nothing has been more frustrating for Marylanders than what has happened to their energy bill,” Peña-Melnyk said at the budget signing, several hours before the deal on a utility bill was announced.

“Affordability comes first, because if people can’t afford to live and raise a family here, nothing else matters,” the speaker said. “Marylanders have been hit hard. They’ve been hit hard by inflation, tariffs, devastating federal government cuts and now gas that’s $1 more per gallon than when the session began. This budget does a lot to help.”

The budget includes no new taxes or fees, even though the state began the year with an estimated $1.5 billion gap between expenses and revenues.

Instead, the plan closes the gap with a combination of fund transfers, cuts and swapping bonds for cash. Among the transfers is $282 million that was diverted from a green energy fund. The budget also redirects $100 million from the Strategic Energy Investment Fund (SEIF), normally set aside for green energy efforts, and will use it to pay down monthly EmPOWER program surcharges.

The budget also cuts $127 million from an expected increase in funding for the Developmental Disabilities Administration, a year after the ballooning DDA budget suffered a $164 million hit.

Ferguson said officials were faced with “making very challenging and hard decisions for many Maryland families, especially with programs that we know are protecting some of the most vulnerable that have grown significantly over the last several years.”

“But I want to be very, very clear,” he said. “These challenging decisions have not meant that we have abandoned our values. We have to be responsible with them.”

The budget signed Wednesday leaves an estimated cash surplus of $250 million at the end of the year. That’s in addition to $2.2 billion in the rainy day fund, or 8% of general fund revenues, well over the 5% minimum required.

At that amount, Maryland could continue to operate for nearly 29 days. That’s less than the 44.9 day average for Southern states and the national median of 47.4 days, according to Pew Research.

That would be enough for Maryland to operate for nearly 29 days, less than the average for states in the Northeast.

While the Democratic leadership was declaring budget victory, Republicans were taking a dimmer view of the situation.

“What are we doing to save money for Marylanders? Not much of anything,” said House Minority Leader Jason C. Buckel (R-Allegany).

Buckel said the effort to lower utility bills by an average of $150 in the coming year — about $12.50 per month — does not go far enough.

Del. April Rose (R-Frederick and Carroll) said she and other Republicans will have to go home and face questions about what was accomplished.

“Sadly, I’d love to go home and say we saved you some real money on your energy bill. We cut car registration fees. We cut emissions fees, things that come out of people’s budgets every single day that they see every single day … even a gas tax holiday,” Rose said.

“I think that we didn’t get a lot of really good things to tell our communities,” she said.

While it erases a projected spending gap for fiscal 2027, the budget does nothing to reduce the billions of dollars in projected gaps that await the governor and legislature in the years after this fall’s election.

“This is an election-year budget that does nothing more than meet the constitution’s requirement to balance it,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore). “It doesn’t raise taxes or fees this year, but it also doesn’t cut them, leaving in place costly burdens like the technology tax and doing nothing to provide real relief for Marylanders.

“Rather than addressing the state’s structural deficit, the governor and Democratic leadership have chosen to push those challenges into the next term by refusing to address structural deficits caused by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, liability for the Child Victims Act and possible reparations,” he said.

“These multibillion-dollar outstanding debt obligations will adversely define our state,” Hershey said. “The necessity to raise taxes next year will impair any opportunities for economic growth and force Marylanders to move to states with surpluses and more tax-friendly climates.”